Mobile operator strategies 26/8/05

OTE (Greece) has transferred its stakes in its Bulgarian and Macedonian mobile subsidiaries to its cellular unit, CosmOTE.

Eircom (Ireland) bought Meteor Mobile for €420m. Eircom is the Irish fixed incumbent willing to re-enter the mobile market.

American Moviles bought Chilean wireless carrier Smartcom for $472m.

3 Ireland has launched 3G services in Ireland.

KPN and DT failed finding an agreement to jointly acquire O2, UK.

Alfa Group (Russia) confirms it has bought 13% of Turkcell and allowed Cukurova to continue controlling Turkcell with a $3bn loan.

Migros and Coop, two heavyweights in the retail landscape in Switzerland, are respectively starting offering MVNO services: Migros with Swisscom and Coop with Orange.

After Indonesia, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and target on expanding to India and Pakistan, Telekom Malaysia has surprisingly invested in Singapore. TM will get about 13% of M1for $227m (but hold about 18%) in a saturated market and with limited short term scope for growth.

AIS, Thailand, will cut its 2G capacity expansion capex this year by $50m to $350m, but will focus on 3G next year and increase capex to $450m.

Telkom Austria bought Mobiltel, the mobile operator in Bulgaria, for about $2bn.

3 UK announced a deal with EMI Music to supply full-length audio tracks directly to over 3m customers on the 3 network.

China Mobile is said to plan investing about $ 14bn in building a 3G network covering 80% of the country over the next two years.